While airbags were originally developed as a passive restraint system, experience has shown that airbags work best in combination with seatbelts and other safety systems. Although airbags contribute to the overall safety of occupants of an automobile, they can present a danger to an occupant who is positioned too close to an airbag when it deploys. This condition, where the occupant is positioned so that airbag deployment might be dangerous, is referred to as the occupant being “out of position”. Various systems have been developed to detect an “out of position” occupant. Sensor systems designed to detect the occupant's position often require constant monitoring so that in the event of a crash the occupant's position is known. Sensor systems designed to detect the position of the occupant have been proposed based on ultrasound, optical, or capacitance sensors. Constant monitoring of sensors, which may have high data rates, requires the design of algorithms which can reduce sensor data to a single condition or a limited number of data conditions which are used in an airbag deployment decision to prevent airbag deployment or for a duel stage airbag to select the level of deployment. Maintaining data integrity between the non-crash positional data, and the noisy environment produced by a crash requires additional processor capabilities and algorithm development with associated testing.